(Mobile Messaging App Map of the World – January 2019)
Most of the world by large uses either Messenger or WhatsApp. Whether you use Messenger or WhatsApp depends on your country. The exception is the United States where everyone is expected to use iMessage unless you want to be considered poor, LOL.
How do you pragmatically handle your social life, I mean when it comes to the online messaging aspect to it?
or how do you let your social life handle you ?
pragmatically speaking you SHOULD be aware that online messaging expands your attack surface and provides constant/fresh “meat” for the global-surveillance machine …
i am often saddened by the remark “do YOU take your dog out for a walk or does IT take YOU … out for a walk ?”
I’d rather not say.
But here are the parameters:
It must be free.
"verification"usually means telephone number and that is unethical.
This pretty much only leaves places that the world deems unethical which I deem ethical.
I don’t have my Librem 5 yet, however for my extended social circle we communicate via IRC.
For most acquaintances and such SMS is still my go to because neither of us has to convince the other to use anything for a temporary conversation.
For anything work related, the software work dictates (mostly email).
If I want it kept “confidential” I don’t write it down…
Why are you saddened by it? I like this analogy. The Middle Way Buddhist in me says you equally take your dog out and he just as well takes you out - and it is perfectly the way it should be.
Please. I’m curious.
As long as I can get a phone number (either real or virtual) which isn’t tied to my identity I’d call phone verification rather just impractical as the confirmation text often doesn’t arrive.
But let me be a devil’s advocate a little! Yes, I know most of the chat service operators are businesses mining and selling your data but even the nicer ones like Signal want to grow their user base. Growth of users usually come from “the next billion” Internet users (and then the next billion and so forth). Quite a few of these new users may have trouble with the concept of using email as an identity, for these users (and they are the majority) the phone number as an identity is simply practical. Their only access to the Internet is often a cheap smartphone and they aren’t the target market for Purism’s expensive devices.
OK. You use SMS for actually texting people. And yes, I’ve asked about your personal methods. But for your interest as a community most people outside the United States only use SMS to receive 2FA codes from their banks and basically that’s about it.
Improbably enough - the vast majority of my circle uses Signal. But even with different ingredients, the expected result is the same - a move off mainstream cellular isolates my phone off of a popular, and in this case, a decently secure, messaging app.
I’m playing with Matrix but my goodness, getting my friends and family to consider moving to Signal was hard enough. I think had a fairly decent success rate. And I’m not sure I have any more currency of that type left.
I am not aware of a mobile messenger app that I would like. Most are either proprietary and/or not available for open platforms like PureOS or UBPorts. Hence I still use SMS text messages.
In addition, my phone most of the time has no mobile data connection. This is because I have Wifi at home and in the office. When on the road, the car has an internet connection and a browser.
On the notebook, there are a bunch of nice platforms such as ZeroNet, Tox or Twister, but convincing non technical people to use them is difficult. Hence I still use eMail for most things, but at least some friends use GPG.
Okay. Just for your information “still” using SMS with friends and family was never an option for me. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I switched the bank, when they only supported SMS for 2FA.
To be fair, the title of this thread says “what do you use?” but it seems your question is “what should I use?”
No. For me the title “what do you use?” is the correct one. According to SimilarWeb only a quarter of the site’s visitors are Americans so I rightfully expected more diversity in the answers from “I still use SMS.”
If your social circle is extended enough you will end up using your country’s default app (that is Messenger or WhatsApp for most people), period. An updated version of the title could sound like “how do you use your country’s default Big Brother messaging app (on your Librem 5 smartphone/in a reasonably private fashion)?”
I daresay most of the (active) forum users are American, at the very least within this thread. Regardless, “SMS” is a valid answer. I’m not trying to start an argument, it just appears that the question you’ve posed hasn’t elicited the information you’re looking for.
But now that I re-read and think about it, it seems the readers here are confusing “messaging app” with “method of sending messages.” That wouldn’t be your fault. And to actually answer your question, I use telegram, though I understand that might be less than desirable because it wants a phone number. But it does work on linux and has a web interface.
For clarification most of the world don’t use and never used SMS for chatting to the extent Americans use it for the simple reason that sending one message in the average plan may cost as much as a minute of talk.
As an American, I do not know anybody that uses WhatsApp nor Messenger. Everyone I talk to (family and friends even coworkers) all use SMS.
Our phone plans generally come with free talk/text, at least that’s what I tend to use because I do text through sms a lot.
I’m aware. But it seems to mean you won’t get acceptable answers from us Yanks.
I think most American plans now have unlimited texting. SMS is my fallback for friends not on Signal or Matrix.
My personal preference - family and a couple of friends are on Matrix. If not that, some are on Signal. For the “What’s App”/etc friends of mine, we fall back on SMS. It is not encrypted, but for all of us, it is free.
I get that you on the whole use SMS (meanwhile your iPhone friends consider you poor in the process, only in America, LOL).
But yeah. I was a little more curious about the other 75%, non-Americans’ preferences, use scenarios, and anecdotes.
For what it’s worth I read “what channels” as communication channels/methods which I wouldn’t limit to “apps”. Sure the only examples in the post were messaging apps, but why would email/IRC not qualify as a communication channel?
For what its worth you’re the only one I’ve seen throwing this insult around. Everyone I know with an iPhone doesn’t care if anyone else uses one or not because the messages they receive show up in iMessage so they don’t care…
Then why not have clarified that you wanted to suppress what you perceived to be a minority in the beginning? Or better yet not complain about the Americans that are sharing this information since it may be useful to others that find this thread?
Meaning, say when you meet up with someone, “sorry, I am late by 10 minutes.” Sure, you can email with your friends from your computer but in a mobile scenario messaging is simply more convenient.
I’m sorry if you’ve found your fellow countryman, Moses Storm’s humor insulting. As I understand he is liberal, progressive, and all that (meaning he shouldn’t sound insulting to most people). I like his humor. I’ve only heard about your country’s culture, so what do I know?
Maybe you didn’t get my full context. By all means, please share your texting use scenarios and anecdotes from an American standpoint - especially if you can add anything new to what has already been said before.